


Danger (Risk of Falling)

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Court Scenarios, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Drowning, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 12:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18468871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Or, five times Edward and Tjelvar saved each other, and one time that no one needed rescuing.





	Danger (Risk of Falling)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sea-Glass (PJ_Marvell)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJ_Marvell/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy! Tried to err on the side of caution with the tags, please let me know if you need something added.

For Edward, there are no warning signs. If anything, Friedrich had been kinder than he should have been – there had been no reprimands for running off, or for anything else. Even though he’d never held his tongue before, not even in front of company, he’d just tersely thanked the LOLOMG and the professor for returning him, and then barely said anything at all, except to ask Edward to keep up, when they’d reached the woods.

They hadn’t passed through them on their way to Rome’s boundary – they’d been on a long straight road the whole time – but Friedrich had said it was a short cut, that it would take them to the nearest town faster, and from there they could get a message to the Church. Edward hadn’t minded, because Rome hadn’t had any trees, and anywhere that he could look at, and know immediately that it very definitely was not Rome, was an improvement.

Friedrich had insisted on making the fire himself, when the dark had come in, but he’d always done that, never trusted Edward with it, just like he doesn’t trust Edward with the cooking, but he still hands Edward a bowl of something – Edward doesn’t know what it is, exactly, but it looks like stew, and Friedrich had made it out of something in his pack. It’s warm, and it doesn’t taste anything like frog, so it makes it onto the list of the best meals he’s ever had.

They eat in silence, Edward because he’s been taught that it’s rude to speak with his mouth full, and Friedrich apparently has nothing that he wants to say. Edward’s tired enough that he’s content to just concentrate on his food, but he must have been more than he’d thought, because when he straightens up again from putting the empty bowl down next to the fire, his head spins violently, and he has to wait a long minute for it to stop. Even then, his edges still seem a little unsteady. He forces his eyes fully open again, and watches as Friedrich gets to his feet again, and starts to clear things away.

“Thank you,” Edward says, but his mouth feels so blurred, he’s not sure it came out right.

“What?” On the other side of the fire, staring up over it, Friedrich drops his bowl. It hits the ground with an audible crack, but Edward thinks if he looks down to see if it’s broken, he won’t be able to look up again.

“You waited,” Edward struggles to clarify. His tongue seems to have gone thick in his mouth, would prefer to uselessly slide at the backs of his teeth than form speech. “For me.”

“It wasn’t my decision.” In Edward’s hazing vision, Friedrich’s mouth curls – for one stuttering beat of Edward’s heart, his teeth are far too long, and then they’re back to normal. “The Church ordered it. Even sent out a gift for the Mars lot, to let me stay there. More of their time and effort, wasted on you. More of their money. What your family gave me to let you wander off won’t even be a drop in the ocean to paying that back.”

The meaning of the words he’s saying is difficult – Edward tries to reach for them, but they pull out of his grasp, bend around his fingers like tendrils of mist. He hears them, knows the language, but they just fall into bursts of sound that he’s unable to parse.

“I don’t understand,” he manages. It feels like it takes a long time to talk – Friedrich is in front of him by the time that he’s finished, a steadying grip on his shoulder. There’s something in his other hand, but all Edward’s spinning, shuddering head can make of it is a dark streak of silhouette.

“You should have died in Rome,” Friedrich says. The sentence drops like the bowl did, clamouring in Edward’s head, but it still can’t push through the fog into meaning.

“I don’t _understand_ ,” Edward repeats. Friedrich doesn’t explain. Instead, there’s a noise like when Sir Bertrand had hit that snow leopard, and then he’s clutching at Edward instead of holding him still. Edward isn’t steady enough to keep him upright. He goes over, off to the side, and lands with a heavy thump on his back.

Edward, half intending to and half unable to stop himself, lists in the direction he was pulled in, leaning after him. He frowns at the arrow sticking out of Friedrich’s stomach, as it wavers and twists like a water-pulled reflection. He doesn’t think it was there before.

“Friedrich?” It barely sounds like his name. But Edward knows what he’s supposed to do, when his allies are hurt, even if he can’t speak properly, even if his limbs feel full of rocks.

It’s an effort, to reach down to him, a crushing sensation behind Edward’s eyes when he tries, but he is a paladin of Apollo, and he makes himself. He pulls the arrow out, the slick ripping sound of it echoing in violent colour somewhere past his sinuses. It slips out of his fingers, but that’s all right, because now all he has to do is press his hand against the wound, and reach for Apollo.

The healing magic almost seems to burn, this time, or maybe he’s somehow got too close to the fire, but he thinks that that wouldn’t make sense, because it used to be in the other direction.

Friedrich uses Edward’s arm to haul himself back up, and then Edward, still puzzling over up and down and where time has gone, can’t breathe.

“Why won’t you just _die_ ,” Friedrich spits, but he’s not in focus anymore. He’s holding the arrow, and he slashes it towards Edward’s face as he speaks, but Edward’s leaning back, trying to get a better look at the hilt of the knife that’s sticking out from just under his collarbone.

The arrow whistles at him again, but this time it hurts, and there must be something in his eyes now, because he can’t see. And he keeps not seeing, even when the white-hot, poker-strike burning in his face starts to fade, and takes everything else with it.

When he comes back to himself, he’s leaning up against something soft, and his head’s been tilted back, a firm grip on his jaw holding his mouth open. He can feel for a moment the neck of a bottle at his lips, and then it’s gone.

“Well done.” The voice is low – he can feel the vibrations of it in his back. Not Friedrich’s, but Edward could have told that from just the words themselves. He thinks for an instant that he recognises it, but that doesn’t make any sense. He must just be hearing what he needs to.

His jaw is released, but the fingers instead circle his wrist, and bring his hand up to rest against what Edward thinks should be his throat, but it doesn’t feel right. There’s a sodden raggedness there, so he’s probably got disoriented again.

“Heal that for me?”

Apollo’s presence is just within reach, and Edward, as long as he keeps his eyes shut so he can stay fooled, trusts the voice enough to do as it tells him. The power is temperate again; if it had a direction, he would turn his face towards it like an overwintered flower in the first rays of spring.

His breathing corrects itself, and he can’t stop his eyes from opening. The face hanging over his, upside down and lit only by the moon, is impossible, but it does match the voice. He blinks, trying to clear his vision, but nothing changes.

“There,” Tjelvar says, dropping Edward’s wrist, resolving even as Edward tries to reason him away. “That’s much better.”

“Tjelvar?” Edward manages. The words send new pain rippling out from his throat, a sensation like something vital’s loosening, and he coughs, then holds his breath for a few seconds, struggling to stop. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the area.” Tjelvar gives him a gentle tap on one shoulder, encouraging him to lean forwards and take his weight off his chest. “And, well. We’ll call it divine inspiration.”

When Edward straightens up, he can make out Friedrich, motionless on the ground a few metres away. There’s a bruise blossoming on one of his cheeks, and a line of blood making its slow way across his forehead. He feels almost dizzy again, would blame it on moving under his own power, but the world remains stubbornly unspinning.

“What’s going on?” he asks. Even to himself he sounds lost, like in that moment years ago, when one of his father’s men had told him that he was to be sent away to the Church of Apollo. It had been all right then, he tries to remind himself, but it feels as impossible now as it did then.

“Did you get the part where he’s trying to kill you?”

Edward hesitates. He does understand that that was what had been happening now, but he doesn’t _get it_ , not at all. He isn’t sure that he wants to.

“He isn’t any longer,” Tjelvar offers. Edward can’t tell whether that’s the rest of his explanation, or if it’s some kind of awkward attempt at comfort. He gives Edward’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, then starts to climb to his feet, as though he’s decided it’s all sorted now. “We’ll take him back to your church. They can deal with it.”

Once Edward is supporting himself again, Tjelvar busies himself rebuilding the fire, down to a handful of scattered, barely-glowing embers. There are scorch marks over the back of his coat, one deep enough that Edward can see down through his layers to the blackened shirt. When he squints, there are some over Friedrich’s clothes, too.

“He said I was a waste,” Edward says, without meaning to. He shouldn’t be, he should be asking if Tjelvar needs any healing, if Friedrich will, once he’s secured, he should be thanking Tjelvar for saving his life, thanking Apollo for sending him. “Am I a waste, Tjelvar?”

“Clearly Apollo doesn’t think so,” Tjelvar says, without turning. It must be a stupid question, because he doesn’t give it any time, but the thought’s still in Edward’s head, worrying at all his other ones like a hungry stray.

“What do you think?”

Tjelvar pauses. He looks back at Edward over one shoulder, the embers glimmering catchlights in his eyes.

“Edward,” he says. “If I didn’t think you were worth saving, I wouldn’t be here. Now, get some rest. I’ll take care of things.”

It’s easier, after that. Edward wraps what’s left of his cloak around himself, and sleeps soundly for the first time since before he’d gone to Rome.

* * *

Tjelvar leaves Edward on the steps of the nearest temple of Apollo. It’s a sodden place, well in need of the grace of a sun god, but the sky remains stubbornly clouded. A few of the townspeople had shot Edward expectant glances as they’d picked their way through the market, as though hoping he could sort it, but he hadn’t noticed. Didn’t seem to be noticing much of anything, which Tjelvar had told himself not only wasn’t a cause for concern, as it wasn’t as if he’d been particularly perceptive when they’d been looking for the tomb, but meant that he could make Friedrich step in each available puddle without being branded an evildoer.

There’s a quick farewell – Edward thanks him, more than once, and hesitantly offers him the blessings of Apollo before he pulls Friedrich inside. Tjelvar doubts they’ve worked – it’s still pouring when he walks back that way, hours later, water running off the brim of his hat.

Edward looks like he’s doing his best, though, sitting sodden on the third step up, face turned up towards the sky.

He’s done enough for Edward now. Any responsibility he’d had had ended well before he’d saved him. Edward’s an adult, he’s with his church, and there’s no one obviously trying to kill him. This is nothing to do with Tjelvar, he lets himself think. Then he turns, pushing through the foot traffic and ignoring the irritated glances and snapped comments from the crowd. He sits down beside Edward, apparently unnoticed.

“All right?” he asks.

Edward shrugs.

“Did you tell them what happened?”

Edward’s head drops, and Tjelvar can see that the rain’s soaked down to his collar at least. Probably further. Enough to make anyone miserable, though Tjelvar’s not naïve enough to hope that that’s it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I told them. Friedrich told them too. I think they believed him more.”

“Did he tell them the truth?”

“Yeah.” Edward sighs through the word, somehow deflates even further. “I don’t think they think he should’ve tried to kill me or nothing, but they said they don’t have the resources to deal with me right now, what with Paris. They’re not assigning me anyone else to keep me out of trouble, everyone’s too busy, they just said they’d find me a room somewhere and that I should stay in it. I know a lot’s happened, but I want help. I _can_ help. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. And I can’t make sure I’m not what he said I was, because they think I am.”

“Do you want me to talk to them?” Tjelvar offers. He doesn’t know what he expects he’s going to _say_ – he can hardly in good conscience try to convince them that Edward doesn’t need supervision – but Edward’s been so different from how he remembers him, so much quieter, so much more distant, and it’s not _right_. Maybe he can tell the church that Apollo himself had sent him to save Edward. It seems like it should be enough.

“No.” Edward shifts, slightly, and the water drips off him at a new angle. “I don’t know.”

“I…” Tjelvar casts about for something to say, some kind of useless comfort that will make Edward feel better and let him go on his way again, but his mind is unyielding as stone. “I am in need of an assistant.” It’s not true. He’s never either wanted or needed an assistant, he doesn’t know why he said it, and he wishes he could take it back.

“Really?” Edward actually looks at him for the first time, features tight like he’s struggling not to hope.

“I can’t promise there’ll be any evil for you to vanquish,” Tjelvar says. “But as you know, my work is worthwhile. I’m sure it befits a paladin of Apollo nicely.”

Edward pulls at the tattered remnants of his cloak, and wipes at his face with them. They’re as soaked as the rest of him, and do nothing to clean him up.

“I’m confident I’ll be able to rely on you to keep my excavations safe,” Tjelvar says, his speech clearer than the mire of confusion in his head, because he should _not_ be doing this, he can almost hear the shattering of pottery already. “And… otherwise free of evil.”

“I’d really like that,” Edward says, glancing uncertainly at Tjelvar, as though he doubts the offer as much as Tjelvar does.

“Then it’s settled,” Tjelvar says. He meets Edward’s tentative smile with one of his own, and, hopes against hope that _somehow_ , he’s going to be pleasantly surprised.

* * *

There are a number of things that Tjelvar could blame, if he wants – his ioun torch is wavering, the handwriting of the journal entry that’s supposed to be helping him navigate the tomb is even less decipherable than the glyphs on the walls, Edward is keeping up a cheerful one-sided conversation about the tiny pastry animals he’d seen in a bakery he’d been to that morning – but none of that changes the fact that it’s his fault. He’s the one who isn’t paying attention.

The first he knows of anything wrong is when he’s being yanked backwards, so forcefully that he nearly completely loses his footing. There might be a noise, he thinks, but it’s drowned out by the crack of his elbow into Edward’s breastplate, the impact shuddering through his arm. He tries to wrench himself back upright, but something – _Edward_ – has got a grip on the handle of his rucksack and won’t let go, his free arm snaking around to hold him in place.

Tjelvar’s throat catches as his mind turns, snapping like a threatened fox at the thought of Edward falling foul of another of those traps that had affected Sir Bertrand – the idea of Edward snarling, the heavy swing of the morningstar – but when he looks, Edward’s expression is focussed but mild.

“Arrow trap,” he says, inclining his head towards the wall.

Tjelvar looks at him a moment longer, convincing himself that it’s only Edward, same as always, and then follows the gesture. There’s a small gap there, between the stonework, and along the other side of the passage, there’s a rough stippling in the wall, an indication of repeated impacts. On the floor there, there’s a small bundle of broken shafts.

“I see,” he says. He glances down at the journal, and then back up again, checking that the layout matches the one outlined. There’s no mention there of an arrow trap, or at least, none that he can see. He might as well just put the useless thing away, he concludes, with a rush of hot irritation through his skin. Maybe then he wouldn’t have had to be rescued by his assistant after one and half excavations. At least none of his colleagues had been around to see that particular humiliation.

He pushes himself out Edward’s grip more firmly this time, and busies himself with a more detailed examination. There are more of them, at different heights, irregular intervals, on both sides of the tunnel. Likely triggered by pressure points on the floor. The heads of the arrows are barbed – it would have been painful, if they’d connected. Though not for long, given how keen Edward is to use his healing abilities at any given opportunity.

Edward, who’s still just standing there. Watching Tjelvar, bright-eyed and expectant, like a dog waiting for praise.

“That was…” _humiliating_ , Tjelvar tries to think past, struggling to force his tone into something a little more gracious. “Well-spotted. Thank you, Edward.”

Edward’s face lights up, more beautiful than any jewel or sunset Tjelvar’s ever seen, he notes, despairing.

“I was just wondering,” he says, smiling so hard he can barely get the words out. “What we were going to do about it?”

“Oh.” Tjelvar looks back out over the corridor, and wishes that it wasn’t suddenly quite so difficult to remember basic tomb navigation.

* * *

Tjelvar has never hated a tomb before. No matter what trials he’d had to go through to get to them, or what dangers might await, once he had been standing inside, there had only ever been excitement. The thrill of discovery, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. All that potential for learning, the sensation of walking _history_ , of his feet fitting into steps last made thousands of years ago – it had always made everything worthwhile.

This one should have been the same. His head breaks the surface, and the first breath of cold air should bring with it that moment of rapture, warming away the aching muscles and the burning lungs from his swim.

Instead, the dank cavern walls promise nothing but the odour of mould, even where the faint light from the water slides over them. There’s a sound, too, some faint resonance – or maybe there’s just water in his ears – but it makes his bones ache, and dulls to nothing the thought that they might be the first people to see this since the burial.

Worst of all, there’s no Edward, leaning down to help him out of the water. Not that Tjelvar needs him to – he crawls out just fine on his own, though his hands slip in the weeds around the edges of the hole, and he can’t quite quell an irritable preference for Edward’s touch – but he had thought that he’d finally managed to put an end to the wandering off, when he’d hit upon the _it’s easier for you to help me if we’re in the same place_ argument. Edward had taken it that to heart, or so he’d thought – there’s no sign of him now, even when Tjelvar digs out his ioun torch, and lets it bob up into the air, bringing the tomb entrance into sick visibility.

Tjelvar sighs, and opens his mouth to call for him. Then he stops – there’s a flicker of movement, somewhere down the tunnel into the rest of the structure. Not much, just enough to catch his eye, but with it, that sound seems to become a little more present, nausea shifting in his gut like oil on water.

He moves after it, as quietly as he can, pulling out his bow as he does. The tunnel walls are close and dripping, scraping at Tjelvar as he goes past, but by the time that they widen out into an antechamber, he already has an arrow nocked. The torch follows amenably after him, floating into the space and then drifting a little higher, to better illuminate it – the entrance to the burial place, the smaller corridors leading off to the side – but there’s no point. Tjelvar’s already seen everything that he cares to.

Edward is standing in the centre of the room, his face holding that gentle blank look that it has in prayer, but the thing in front of him is so far from Apollo that Tjelvar wants to retch. Its limbs are long and dripping, the flesh of its face slack and wasted from too long submerged, and its one remaining eye is smooth and misted like a pearl. A number of long, spindling limbs reach out from the socket of the other, thin and jointed like birds’ bones. Edward should be hitting at it, should be declaring it evil, should be promising to wipe it from the face of this plane and then going into an awkward ramble about how awful the other planes were.

Instead, he just stands there, its face far too close to his, even as it seems to be leaning back, the back of one long-fingered hand drifting down against his cheek. The movement is slow, like they’re both underwater, a single point of serenity, somewhere distant and unaffected by Tjelvar’s horror.

Then Edward crumples, goes down like his knees have been kicked out from under him, coughing violently and clawing at his throat.

Tjelvar’s arrow buries itself in the thing’s intact eye. Its only reaction is to turn towards him, and that background sound sharpens, pressing at his skull like a brewing migraine.

His second shot goes into its throat, in between a scattering of barnacles, and he’s considering just going for his sword and seeing whether it’s as indifferent to having its head removed, but this time it staggers backwards. Then it turns, and stumbles away, down one of the smaller passages. He sends a third arrow after it, but doesn’t look to make sure it’s connected.

On the ground, Edward’s gone still, no longer hacking up water, and instead taking long, rattling breaths, cheek pressed against the stone.

Tjelvar moves to his side and crouches there, struggling to keep looking in the direction the thing took, to keep his hands on the bow, in case it comes back.

“Edward?” he asks, keeping his voice hushed, in case there’s anything else down here. “Are you with me?”

“Yes,” Edward manages, gasped out between gulps of air. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look it, eyes too wild, hands shaking. Tjelvar thinks for a second that there might be blood on his lips, but he wipes it away before he can be sure.

“What have we said about wandering off?” It’s not kind, Tjelvar knows it isn’t, but better an unkind Tjelvar than a dead Edward. Even though it seems, from the Apollo Church’s lack of interest in the reports he sends, like he’s the only person who would grieve.

“Sorry, Tjelvar.” Edward pushes himself back up into a sitting position, wincing as he does so. “I didn’t want to, but – did you hear it singing?”

Not his choice, then, Tjelvar concludes. He risks taking a hand off his bow, to give Edward’s shoulder a gentle squeeze, though he’s not sure if it’s supposed to be support or apology or just a confirmation that he’s still there.

“No,” he says, smoothing his thumb along the end of Edward’s collarbone. “Just, remember to wait for me when you can, all right? Good assistants are hard to come by, so I would appreciate it if I could keep the one I’ve got.”

He straightens up again, half-wondering when he’d become the type to give out compliments so freely, and half-knowing that that’s because of the way that Edward almost seems to glow when he does. He doesn’t look at Edward, as he starts towards the thing’s tunnel, knows that if he does he’ll lose all focus. He can almost hear the smile though, has the faint sunlight-shape of what it would look like.

“Thanks, Tjelvar!” Edward calls after him, the sounds blurring with his need for air.

Tjelvar nods, half to himself. He’s already decided that nothing’s going to get past him. It only feels right, after all, that when Edward puts so much effort into making his excavations safe, Tjelvar does the same for him.

* * *

Tjelvar keeps changing his mind about what the worst part of this situation is. At first, it had been the fact that the person who had been intending to finance their dig had been murdered. Second, and only very shortly after he’d discovered that, it had become being arrested for that person’s murder. Third, that when he’d tried to explain that he’d just found the body to the guards, they’d decided to take that as resistance, and knocked him into submission accordingly.

Then there had been the cell they’d kept him in – to say nothing of the general décor, there had been a couple of other people in there, and while they had both ended up keeping their distance, Tjelvar had never been quite so aware of how little chance he would have in a fight.

Then the officers hadn’t looked into anyone else, then they’d rushed to get him to trial, then the only evidence gathered seemed to be the stuff that supported the conclusion they had already made, then the judge seemed to have taken against him.

Really, he thinks, as he watches the latest worst thing push his way through to the witness box, he should stop trying to have standards for how bad things can get. Edward is trailed by a couple of bailiffs, who shrug at the judge’s raised eyebrow, and make a gesture that, while it’s not one Tjelvar’s seen before, he feels like he knows. One of them skirts around to hand the judge a piece of paper, and she sighs at it, then clears her throat.

“Well,” she says. “It seems like as a… character witness? We have…”

“Ed.” Edward gives the courtroom a wave, and then settles back into his usual upright paladin stance. “Hello.”

“Ed?” The judge squints down at her piece of paper again, then seems to decide it will be of no further use. “And who are you, Ed?”

“I am a paladin of Apollo,” Edward announces, and somehow manages to straighten his back even further. At least, Tjelvar supposes, he looks handsome, and stalwart, and every inch the paladin. But it doesn’t help that he can almost see the prosecutor noting to himself, _good, but easily led_. Tjelvar expects the usual speech, about smiting evil, but instead Edward just continues, “And I am here to ask that you release Tjelvar immediately.”

“On what grounds?” The judge blinks at him, like she’s trying to do complicated maths in her head. “If he’s required to answer for crimes elsewhere, you need to put in a formal request–”

“On the grounds that he hasn’t murdered anyone,” Edward says, with the same expression he gets when he’s just vanquished something. Tjelvar struggles to resist the urge to bury his face in his hands.

“Oh?” The judge’s frown somehow deepens further. “That _is_ what we are gathered here to determine.”

“Oh, then I can save you the bother,” Edward declares, as pleased as ever to be helpful. “He’s innocent. Never murdered anyone. Promise.”

The judge leans back in her seat, and gestures the prosecutor forward. He smirks, turns towards Edward with all the relish of a leopard approaching an unattended lamb.

“You were with Mr Stornsnasson when the murder took place?” he asks.

“No. I just know he wouldn’t murder anyone.”

“How so?”

“Murdering’s evil. He’s not evil. I’ve checked.”

“And, what is your relationship to Mr Stornsnasson?”

Tjelvar bristles. He can’t help himself, even though he’s sure it makes the situation look worse. The implication, that Edward’s word could be discounted because of something like _that_ , feels like a slap to the face, and it’s a gesture he wants to return. Edward, at least, doesn’t seem to have noticed.

“Assistant,” he says. “I help him with his digging up old things. There’s more evil there than you’d think, and I make it so there isn’t anymore.”

“Edward, as well as acting as my assistant, ensures the safety and moral veracity of my excavations,” Tjelvar interjects, trying to speak softly, but also to ensure that it carries. “He is in regular contact with the Church of Apollo, and they fully support his continued association with me.” The Church, Tjelvar’s sure, still struggling to coordinate after Paris, would probably happily support anything that would mean Edward’s someone else’s responsibility for just a little bit longer.

“Yeah,” Edward says. “That.”

The judge shoots Tjelvar a glance, and he can’t tell if it’s supposed to quiet him, or thank him for making the situation a little clearer. He hopes it’s the second one.

“As good as I’m sure the jury finds the word of a paladin of Apollo,” the prosecutor says, scathing and with particular emphasis on the name of the god. “Do you have any actual evidence to support your conclusion? Any proof? Anyone else willing to confess? Anything at all to throw doubt on the proceedings?”

“I swear by Apollo, and may he strike me down if I am wrong or lying, Tjelvar has not murdered anyone,” Edward says, without hesitation. Tjelvar wants to be touched by that, for a heartbeat – the faith that Edward has in him, how utterly willing he is to lay down his life next to Tjelvar’s – it’s warm, and something that he hopes he’ll be able to store away for later, because this is _not the place for it_.

“I’m sure you believe that,” the prosecutor says, slowly and clearly. “But–”

“Apollo hasn’t struck me down,” Edward points out, though it feels like less of an argument and more like he’s just making sure everyone’s noticed. “And, Tjelvar, did you do it?”

“No, Eddie, I didn’t,” Tjelvar sighs.

“Well then,” Edward says. “Lying’s evil. I think about this sort of thing even if you _aren’t_ a paladin, and Tjelvar’s not. Still not. I’m checking now.”

The judge nods, heavily, and Tjelvar can almost feel her patience starting to wear.

“It may be obvious to you,” she says. “But our jury can’t see it the way you do.”

“I can’t lie,” Edward says. “I’m not lying.”

“Thank you, Ed,” the judge manages, and gestures for Edward to leave, with one of the tightest smiles that Tjelvar has ever seen.

Edward doesn’t.

“I don’t think you understand,” he says. “You need to let him go. He didn’t do it. Even if it wasn’t evil, he was going to give Tjelvar a lot of money to do his dig, and now Tjelvar won’t get to do it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It is not our place to determine motive,” the judge says. “Only whether or not he–”

“He didn’t,” Edward repeats, and there’s a sort of desperate bewilderment in his face now. “So you’ve got to let him go. He’s not evil. He’s the best person I know. And I know paladins.”

“Be that as it may–”

“You know what is evil, though?” Edward’s eyes are suddenly a little more focussed, on Tjelvar, bright and sure and almost certainly about to say something even worse.

“You may tell us,” the judge says, slowly. “But then you really will need to let us continue with our proceedings.”

“If you hurt him,” Edward says, and there’s not even the edge of a threat to it, just the simple sort of explanation where he’s sure his audience already knows this, but he’s happy to help them out. “Because of something he didn’t do, that’s evil. And that would make you my problem.”

Edward finally lets himself be led from the witness box, but he stops, a few steps away from the seating, turns back towards Tjelvar, and gestures at him, muttering something to himself. For the barest of seconds, there is sunlight in the courtroom. Tjelvar feels it in the scrapes and bruises on his face from his arrest, the cuts and splinters from being dragged, and then he doesn’t feel them any longer. Edward glows, for that moment, and Tjelvar thinks that perhaps he does, too, but then it all fades, and Edward is letting a firm hand on his shoulder push him down into one of the chairs.

A couple of more heavily armed bailiffs linger near him, and Tjelvar curses under his breath. Of course Edward’s decided the best course of action is to make himself a target, in the case that the jury returns a guilty verdict. Of course he has.

The judge glances from Edward to Tjelvar and back again, and then beckons an aide over. She mutters something to him, then settles back into her chair, leaving him to scurry off.

“I’m just having the young paladin’s identity checked,” she says. “As I’m sure the jury will need all the information possible, if they would like to take his testimony into consideration – and the word of a paladin of course cannot be taken lightly, no matter how… It cannot be taken lightly.”

Tjelvar glances at the jurors, trying to discern whether there’s been any change in their faces, whether for better or for worse. He can’t quite make them out, so he settles for looking at Edward instead, hoping that he’ll see sense, and decide not to fight the entire courtroom, no matter how squarely they might have placed themselves in the middle of his definition of evil. Edward grins at him, apparently completely unaware of the bailiffs’ scrutiny. Tjelvar doesn’t return it, sure that that would be inappropriate. Edward doesn’t seem to take offence. He just settles back, and waits with the rest of them to hear Tjelvar’s fate.

* * *

It’s too late for any more work now. The sun’s too low, and their lamps and torches didn’t provide enough light to see by, not enough for colour and detail, and that was what they needed, Tjelvar had said. Edward’s content enough to stop for the day, though his job’s mostly been pushing wheelbarrows of soil around, and occasionally listening to Tjelvar talk excitedly about whatever he’d found or thought he might find, and he can do that no matter how dark it gets.

There’s not a lot of evil to be found, on remote English hillsides. Edward keeps an eye out for it anyway, because it would be just like evil to try to strike where it was least expected, but he’d see it coming a long way off, up here.

He likes it, he thinks. There’s rock, a little further up the hillside, that looks down on the patchwork turf of the dig site, and when he sits there, he can see a great green expanse on all sides, a shade he hadn’t realised he’d been missing, after so long in warmer places. In the distance, he can just about make out a stripe of grey-blue that he’s sure is the sea.

By the time that Tjelvar comes to sit beside him, the sun’s slanting sideways over the hills, starting to burst into colour over the horizon. Edward inclines his head sideways, an attempt at a greeting, and Tjelvar pats his arm in response.

Neither of them says anything. The quiet’s too rare to break – it’s been a still day, one where they’ve not needed to set up the tarpaulins over the trenches, and the wind is down to a whisper around the edges of their senses.

The sun sets, always faster than Edward thinks it should. Perhaps Tjelvar sees it longer – he can see better in the dark, certainly, but Edward doesn’t know if that extends to seeing the sunset lights in the sky after they’ve faded from Edward’s vision. Maybe one day, he’ll ask. He’d like to know, if it looks different to Tjelvar, how.

Tjelvar faces the horizon a long time. He doesn’t seem to notice Edward’s scrutiny, even when Edward takes the time to look, wondering as Tjelvar’s eyes turn darker and darker, exactly what they see.

Eventually, a shiver runs through him, and Edward shifts a little closer, wishes he was brave enough to put an arm around his shoulders.

“We should go and get the fire going,” he says. They should have done it ages ago, but with Tjelvar’s magic, it never takes long to start. He forgets that, sometimes, if Tjelvar’s had to be somewhere else, and he’s left struggling to work the flint and steel in the dark.

Tjelvar turns his head to look at him, his face blank as though he’s only just remembered that there’s somewhere else for them to go. Edward would like it if there weren’t, if they could sit there together for the rest of time, but he’s supposed to look after Tjelvar’s excavations, and that means looking after Tjelvar, even if Tjelvar hasn’t noticed there’s a problem.

“I was thinking about the village,” Tjelvar says, gesturing down towards the dig site. “Trying to picture the walls, the buildings. How it might have looked. I was wondering if they would have come up to this stone to watch, too – look.” He points out a few smoother portions of the stone, takes Edward fingers and brushes them over them. Tjelvar’s hand is too cold, more of a shock to touch than the rock itself, and maybe that’s why he doesn’t let go. “This is what happens when people are applying pressure to stone over a very long period of time – you’ve probably seen it on the steps at your church?”

Edward considers that for a long moment, and then nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “So, you think that there were people from the village coming up here a lot? It is a good spot to look for evil from.”

“Yes,” Tjelvar says. “That is what I’m thinking. And I was wondering about what sort of people they were, why they abandoned the village – things I was hoping to learn from the excavation. What sort of people might have sat here.”

Edward has no idea how to reply to that, and he isn’t sure that he’s meant to. Tjelvar just seems to like talking about this sort of thing, sometimes, and Edward likes that it means something to him, that it’s something he decides to share with _him_.

“Well, we’re here now,” he offers, when Tjelvar doesn’t say anything else, but doesn’t stop looking at him, either.

Tjelvar smiles, and releases Edward’s fingers. Edward regrets that, for the long moment that it takes Tjelvar to bring his hand up to Edward’s cheek. It rests there, Tjelvar’s thumb tracing over his skin. Edward doesn’t dare move, hardly breathes, and maybe that’s why it feels like it takes the whole lifetime of the village for Tjelvar to lean in, ever so slowly, and kiss him.

Edward shifts into it, accidentally knocks his forehead into Tjelvar’s and freezes, but there’s just a faint laugh against his lips, and Tjelvar’s cool, steady touch.

“Yes,” Tjelvar says, when he eventually pulls back. “We are.”

He goes quiet again, and Edward supposes that means that he’s not supposed to say anything either. Not that he has anything _to_ say – he feels like he has everything and nothing on his tongue, and none of it will become words.

He counts out the seconds, so that he knows that it’s at least a minute before he speaks again.

“We should really get the fire going. Maybe your old people did that too?”

“I expect they did,” he sighs, pushing himself off the rock, then turning back to offer Edward a hand down. “Come on, then.”

Edward takes it, because he can never quite get the pressure of the jump right when he’s not wearing his armour, even when he can see properly, and scrambles after him. Tjelvar only lets go once he’s led Edward to their campsite, finding the sure pathway through the dark, and then he goes straight to the fire. He fusses with the wood, and then mutters something, and there is fire.

Edward closes his eyes briefly against the dazzle, then settles next to Tjelvar in the circle of light. They wait together, for the fire to be hot enough to cook with, and he watches the flickering and the sparks reflect in Tjelvar’s eyes, just like he had all that time ago, after Friedrich.

It takes him a long time to realise that Tjelvar is looking back. Before, he would have turned his face away, scrutinising the dark red glow of the logs. Tjelvar noticing him watching had felt like such a danger – the _only_ danger – but now, Edward meets his eyes, and can’t even remember why he thought there was a risk.

Not when together, they’re safe.


End file.
